Business is booming over in NCsoft’s world, though it’s not because of its western holdings. In this first quarter of 2020, the South Korean gaming giant doubled its revenue year-over-year (yes, doubled), from a combination of hopping mobile sales and “stable” PC online games – especially the Lineage franchise titles and specifically Lineage 2M (on mobile), which launched at the end of last year and blew up this year during the pandemic. Part of the huge boost is the comparison to a particularly shabby Q1 2019, but still.
Of course, it’s those PC games that you’re here to read about. Guild Wars 2, Aion, and Blade & Soul all did better in Q1 than in Q4 last year, but they’re all down revenue-wise since Q1 2019. Reverse that for Lineage and Lineage 2, which are up compared to this quarter last year but have suffered a bit since Lineage 2M took off (and presumably pulled away fans).
The investor call offers a few other tidbits, including the news that Project TL will finally enter testing in 2020 and that Blade & Soul 2 is still happening and will indeed come westward.
Analyst Daniel Ahmad also broke the news this morning that Tencent has picked up publishing for Guild Wars 2 in China “soon.” ArenaNet’s MMO launched in China in 2014 under Kongzhong, but Tencent will pub it through WeGame, which’ll put it before the eyeballs of a whole lot more people. And of course, we already knew that ArenaNet is now working on the Cantha expansion for Guild Wars 2.
